Bruins would be well-served to eliminate Canadiens now

The Bruins can close out their best-of-7 playoff series against the Canadiens in Game 6 on Monday night at the Bell Centre. After winning the series' last two games, the B's don't need to give the Canadiens any momentum if the series returns to Boston for a Game 7.

This isn’t a “now-or-never” game. “No time like the present” works, though. The Bruins can finish their Round 2 playoff series with the Canadiens and earn their third trip to the Eastern Conference finals in four years, by winning Game 6 tonight at the Bell Centre (7:30, NBCSN, WBZ-FM/98.5). If the B’s don’t get it done, they’ll play Game 7 on Wednesday at TD Garden.

And who really wants that, besides the Canadiens, their fans and TV networks?

Granted, the B’s have become pretty good at these, winning four of their lastfive5 Game 7s after losing the first three they played under coach Claude Julien.

They’re never a sure thing, though, even when played at home: The Bruins are 3-3 in Game 7s at the Garden under Julien, although they’ve won three of the last four Game 7s on home ice. Every Game 7 they’ve played at the Garden under Julien has been decided by a single goal and four have gone to overtime.

Is that really how you want to spend your Wednesday night?

Well, the Bruins don’t, either.

“You can’t give them a chance to get into it and build momentum,” defenseman Johnny Boychuk said after Saturday’s 4-2 win in Game 5. “(The Canadiens) are a good team and, if you give them a chance, they’re going to burn you.”

The Bruins, in general, don’t believe they’ve played their best hockey in this series, although they think they’ve inched closer in Games 4 (1-0, overtime win at Montreal) and 5. They’ve been consistently good, however, at stifling momentum the Habs could have built. The B’s rebounded from a double-overtime loss in Game 1 to score a comeback win in Game 2 and, more importantly, they won Game 4 to even the series after letting the Canadiens do so much of what they’re best at in Game 3. The Habs won that one, 4-2, after racing – literally – to a 3-0 lead.

“There’s no doubt (Game 4) was a big win for us,” Julien said. “You’ve got yourself back in the race and you’ve got home ice advantage again. It’s a great position to be in, but we had to win (Game 5) in order to make that happen – continue taking advantage of home ice.”

The Bruins can take a lot of confidence into Game 6.

They split Games 3-4 in Montreal and are now 3-1 on the road this postseason. They lead this series despite the absence of any measurable even-strength help from their top line of Milan Lucic, David Krejci and Jarome Iginla, and they’ve won two straight without any 5-on-5 contributions from the Brad Marchand-Patrice Bergeron-Reilly Smith trio that carried them throughout the first eight games of this postseason.

Page 2 of 2 - The power play ended an 0-for-10 drought with two important goals on Saturday and, while the penalty-killers surrendered goals Nos. 5 and 6 of this series, they first killed consecutive penalties late in the first period, shortly after Carl Soderberg gave them a 1-0 lead. Joined by rookie Matt Fraser, Soderberg and Loui Eriksson have scored three goals in the last two games, and Tuukka Rask has stopped 62-of-64 shots in the last two games, after an up-and-down start to the series.

The Habs, meanwhile, are basically still alive because P.K. Subban (4-3–7) has been a big-game player, Carey Price stole Game 1 (48 saves in a double-OT win), and they’ve killed penalties well. Plenty of other weapons – Max Pacioretty, David Desharnais, Thomas Vanek – have been silent and, if the B’s allow them to wake up to win Game 6, Game 7 becomes that much harder to win.

Better that it doesn’t come to that.

“That’s a goal,” Iginla said. “We expect we’re going to have to play our best game yet, but we also feel like we want to keep building off what we’re doing.”

“It’s going to be tough to steal” a clinching win at the Bell Centre, Smith said, “but we’re going there (to do that). We don’t want to come back to play another game.’’

AROUND THE BOARDS

As briefly as they could, the B’s addressed the $2.850.20 fine levied against winger Shawn Thornton for unsportsmanlike conduct – squirting water at Subban from the bench near the end of Game 2.

“As a coach, you always want to support your players, but there’s certain things you can’t support,” Julien said. “I don’t think I can support Shawn on those actions. ... I don’t think we like seeing our players do that.”

Thornton didn’t take questions from reporters, but did say: “I obviously got caught up in the moment. … I’m sorry that the silly incident kind of overshadowed how my teammates played and the great win and how good the series has been.”

Mike Loftus may be reached at mloftus@ledger.com. On Twitter.com: @MLoftus_Ledger.